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Lane-Petter’s Pipeline: Why reliably decreasing animal research takes more than replacements - European Journal for Philosophy of Science

‼️ Now OPEN ACCESS 🐭 People often think that, if we keep replacing animal models with NAMs, eventually we'll use fewer animals. It's why many people endorse the 3Rs. But as I argue, we also constantly come up with new animal models. There's kind of a pipeline dynamic. And it can go on indefinitely.

link.springer.com

Programs for the “three Rs” of “replace, reduce, refine” (Russell & Burch 1959) aim to make science more compatible with animal protection. This article draws attention to a major obstacle to that end...

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So it's good to have the situation resolved and the paper finally accessible. It might actually be the most important paper in my project, as it highlights a crucial limitation of the 3Rs approach. If we want lower total reliance on animals, we have to actively shape the innovation landscape.

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By contrast, my uni in 🇨🇭 just told me to accept the paywall, violating the OA requirement of my funder, the SNSF. The difference is that (a) my work remains less accessible in the meantime and (b) I'm potentially on the hook for violating the OA requirement. It's the solution that least benefits me.

A colleague told me that their uni in 🇳🇱 has their back in such cases. They essentially tell them: "Make the paper freely available, we'll cover legal costs if needed." It's kind of a power move in contract negotiations.

When this paper got accepted in late 2025, my uni still had an OA agreement with the publisher. But that agreement lapsed in early 2026, trapping my paper behind a paywall for the past few months. Very frustrating.

Lane-Petter’s Pipeline: Why reliably decreasing animal research takes more than replacements - European Journal for Philosophy of Science

link.springer.com

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Reposted by Nico Müller

📣📝 New OA paper out! 📣📝 From veggie burgers to organs-on-chip, we often think about harm reduction in terms of finding less harmful alternatives to current practices. I discuss #animalresearch to show that sometimes, we need something more, or different, than alternatives. doi.org/10.1007/s119...

Screenshot of the title "Harm reduction, alternatives, and the ethics of transition" by Nico Müller in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics.

Emily R. Trunnell, Ph.D. @ertrunnell.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Reposted by Nico Müller

In a new paper, @nicodmueller.bsky.social argues that a core feature of modern #sciencepolicy stands in the way of reducing the use of animals in experimentation. Governments fund research and set ethical boundaries, but scientists largely decide which questions receive funding and attention.

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But I think that there is more to harm reduction than just alternatives. Alternatives are other ways to get what we want. Sometimes, harm reduction requires that we rethink what we want. Or that we don't get what we want. Or that we stop figuring out new harmful ways to get what we want.

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This is all very helpful, including to philosophers who write about alternatives to animal experimentation. Turner's paper pairs very well with Kramer's take on what makes an alternative. doi.org/10.1017/S096...

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Among other things, Turner argues that what counts as a "functionally equivalent" alternative should depend on how much less harm the alternative inflicts. E.g., a veggie burger doesn't have to taste exactly like a beef burger to count as similar enough to be an alternative.

The short paper is mainly a response to Cody Turner's compelling and helpful take on the topic in the same journal here: doi.org/10.1007/s119...

Screenshot of the title "Choosing less harmful alternatives: The ethics of harm reduction in emerging technologies" by Cody Turner in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics.

Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I don't want to complain too much. It's nice to get to talk on TV. But it does bug me that some version of the anthropomorphization question comes up for almost every single animal-related topic.

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Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Today in "Journos Worrying About Anthropomorphization": Is pet insurance anthropomorphization? 💸 Yes, sure. Totally. It's not as if other animals had bodies, as if they could get sick or injured, or as if they sometimes needed medical attention that costs money. Only humans have those features. 🫠

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Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

We all make typos, but accidentally name-dropping Huntingdon Life Sciences in an article about animal experimentation is a bit too on-the-nose. Other than that, The Lancet seems to have little new to say about the animal experimentation transition. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Screenshot from a Lancet article. The text reads: "…deeply disruptive to the health and wellbeing of the animal, for example inducing a condition like Huntingdon's disease. About 48 000 experimental…". The word "Huntingdon", a misspelling of "Huntington", is underlined in red.

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Reposted by Nico Müller

🚨 New OA article 🚨 In which I argue that a gradual, controlled transition away from animal-reliant methods requires a break with laissez-faire science policy. #3Rs #animalexperimentation #animalresearch #animalethics doi.org/10.1017/pls....

Screenshot of title and abstract of Nico Müller's new article entitled "No transition without participation: Why moving beyond animal studies requires public input into the research agenda"

The abstract reads: "In many countries, a large portion of animal studies serve publicly funded research purposes, yet a transition beyond animal research is politically desired. This article argues that a gradual transition is obstructed by three commitments of traditional science policy: (1) the state should provide resources for research; (2) it should leave the direction of research to the scientific community; and (3) it should set side constraints for research. This framework severely restricts public influence on the amount and kind of animal research conducted with public funds. The public can allocate some extra resources to the innovation of alternatives to animal models or tighten legal side constraints, but neither approach is likely to significantly decrease
reliance on animal research overall. A gradual transition away from publicly funded animal research toward new approaches is feasible only if the second commitment is reconsidered, allowing the public greater
influence over the research agenda."

Like in most of what I write, the paradigmatic context is 🇨🇭. Here, public input into the research agenda is essentially inexistent. The result has been a series of unsuccessful, and frankly unproductive, attempts to get all animal experimentation banned.

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So if we really want to reduce goal conflicts between science and animal protection, we should relax our commitment to the idea that scientists alone should decide what gets researched how much. (Of course, they already don't, in some places.)

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If the public is supposed to pay, but doesn't get a say in research priorities, its ways to encourage a transition to NAMs are limited. It can (a) provide extra resources for some 3Rs initiatives, or (b) put stricter legal side constraints on animal experimentation. Neither is very promising.

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Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

For anyone who missed our digital workshop earlier this year, here's a brief summary! Coorganised with Love Hansell and @simonlohse.bsky.social 🙌 #animalexperimentation #animalresearch #3Rs doi.org/10.14573/alt...

Screenshot of an article title: "Meeting Report: Understanding Challenges and Opportunities for the Transition Beyond Animal Experimentation in Research and Safety Testing: What's New? What's Next?" by Nico Müller, Love Hansell, and Simon Lohse.

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Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

"This article argues that the law’s ignorance of the harm of killing leads to its trivialization in practice and, consequently, undermines the ethical legitimacy of deadly animal research projects." #animalresearch #3rs #animalethics doi.org/10.1007/s11019-026-10382-y

Screenshot of the abstract of the article "How ignoring the harm of killing undermines the ethical legitimacy of animal research: a case study from Switzerland" by Christian Rodriguez, Charlotte Blattner, and Angela Martin. The abstract reads:

The most established approach to legitimizing animal research worldwide is through Harm-Benefit Analyses (HBAs), which require that the expected benefits of research be compared to and outweigh the harms done to animals. For this process to be ethically sound, all relevant harms must be considered. However, HBAs leave one fundamental harm insufficiently considered: killing, i.e., the deliberate termination of animals’ lives as part of the research project. This article argues that the law’s ignorance of the harm of killing leads to its trivialization in practice and, consequently, undermines the ethical legitimacy of deadly animal research projects. While our argument applies broadly, we use Switzerland as an illustrative case example. We first disentangle, from an ethical standpoint, the harms that killings inflict on animals in research. Second, we show that most harms of killing, both to the inherent worth and wellbeing of animals, are not accounted for in law, allowing killings to be trivialized. Third, we propose that killing should always (a) be subject to ethical and legal scrutiny by animal research commissions, (b) have to pass the necessity test (i.e., killing should be permitted if, and only if, it is necessary to achieve the purpose of the experiment), and (c) be included in HBAs. Fourth, we consider common objections to our arguments, and, in concluding, show why recognizing the harm of killing is essential to upholding the ethical legitimacy of animal research.

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Reposted by Nico Müller

Matt Perry @mattwperry.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Very happy to announce that our article "Animals and Human Rights" is now out in Philosophy Compass. It was wonderful working on this with my friend and colleague Dr. Valérie G. Topf! Check it out here: compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Display of the abstract for the paper which reads "This article argues that human rights theory faces pressure from scholarship on animals. Because grounding human rights in
bare species membership seems implausible, most theories ground such rights in species neutral criteria. These criteria may be
naturalistic (based on sentience or autonomy, for example) or functionalist (based on the socio‐political role of rights). Standard
theories of human rights have not adequately addressed that many animals appear to meet these criteria, as we show that they
do across a range of arguments. However, consistency demands that if a being meets the criteria a theory stipulates for the
possession of human rights, they should be recognised as possessing such rights. This leaves human rights theory with three
options: it must either explain why these criteria are not met by animals after all, offer alternate criteria—or recognise many
animals as bearers of ‘human’ rights"

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Reposted by Nico Müller

Kim Stallwood @kimstallwood.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

A BIG shout out to the Tier im Recht Library Newsletter edited by Moena Zeller, TIR Librarian and Federally Certified Bookbinder. The TIR Library Newsletter is a MUST-read. To subscribe, please email Moena at zeller@tierimrecht.org. Or visit www.tierimrecht.org/de/ueber-uns...

tierimrecht.org

Newsletter TIR-Bibliothek - Stiftung für das Tier im Recht (TIR)

Der Newsletter zur TIR-Bibliothek informiert über aktuelle Neuzugänge und gibt Lesetipps.

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Reposted by Nico Müller

Marta Tafalla @tafallamarta.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Nuevo número de la revista Animal Ethics Review: raco.cat/index.php/AE...

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Yes, and when they ask us, of all people, they might be interested not just in the history or X for its own sake, but in the framing of X that a specific telling of history suggests.

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I'll address my own question here. Sometimes, media might ask a philosopher, but not to access *knowledge* as much as a (reasoned) *perspective*. In this function, we're more pundits than scientific experts. But so what? If done well, punditry may help broaden discussions, bring in new aspects etc

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...needless to say, the anthropomorphization question was posed again.

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At Nico Müller Enterprises we take customer feedback seriously. I just gave another (!) interview, this time for the evening news, and I emphasized the first line more this time. I also mentioned that laying hens often have broken keelbones. Let's see if they dare use that right before Easter.

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Thanks! There may of course be other reasons too (eg, more research getting done overall). And the paper doesn't assess empirically how much of this pipeline dynamic actually happens. But it gives reasons why the dynamic *can* go on indefinitely. So a *reliable* decrease requires addressing it.

Lane-Petter’s Pipeline: Why reliably decreasing animal research takes more than replacements

Thank you for the great write-up, @ertrunnell.bsky.social! 🤝 The link below gives read-only access to the paywalled paper. Unfortunately, the open access agreement between my institution and Springer lapsed just as this paper went from acceptance to publication. If anyone needs the pdf, I'm here. ✌️

link.springer.com

Emily R. Trunnell, Ph.D. @ertrunnell.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Reposted by Nico Müller

Replacement changes what tools are available. Displacement changes how science is done. @nicodmueller.bsky.social's revisit of “Lane‑Petter’s Pipeline” provides the wider lens we need to modernize and humanize biomedical research. 🧵 #bioethics #paradigmchange #scipol #metasci #philsci

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Yeah I'm not ditching that first line, I like it too. Fwiw, I like that the point re: perceived intelligence/warmth relates to humans too. This is how we humanize/dehumanize. Whales/cats/dogs tend to be on the lucky side of this equation, but many other animals and some humans don't.

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Also, we shouldn't confuse media attention with moral attention. There's probably a reason why whale strandings do well as a news story in a way the daily suffering and death of countless chicken doesn't.

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Usually, I say something like: our bigger problem may actually be anthropodenial. This time, I thought of Kasperbauer and said: if some people care more about this whale than e.g. millions of chicken, that might be a matter of perceived intelligence/warmth. So, humanization, not anthropomorphism.

The "journos worrying about anthropomorphization" saga continues. Just gave a short phone interview to 🇨🇭 public radio about the whale stranded in 🇩🇪. Like clockwork, the first substantive question was: do people anthropomorphize the whale? I tried another answer this time.

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Reposted by Nico Müller

🚨 New paper by myself and @tristankatz.bsky.social 🚨 "Harm-Benefit Analysis for Animal Experiments Is Not Utilitarian" It's commonly claimed that HBA – used in the licensing of animal studies – is utilitarian. We say this vastly oversells the framework. #animalexperimentation #animalresearch #3Rs

Screenshot of title and abstract for "Harm-Benefit Analysis for Animal Experiments Is Not Utilitarian". The abstract reads:

The claim is commonplace that harm-benefit analysis (HBA), a weighing procedure widely used in ethics reviews of animal experiments, is utilitarian. We argue this is false and misleading for three reasons: (1) HBA does not compare, let alone maximize, utility across different options, but merely assesses whether the consequences of one option are net-positive, thereby ignoring opportunity costs; (2) HBA does not aggregate utility coherently, as it allows for varying degrees of speculation in the assessment of harms and benefits; (3) HBA is not concerned with moral evaluation or moral goodness. From our discussion, we derive positive suggestions for how to improve animal experimentation policy and public communications about it. Most straightforwardly, scholars and institutions should stop claiming that HBA is “utilitarian.”

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I'm afrait not, because the features of HBA we mainly highlight are: (1) it ignores opportunity costs; (2) it allows much more speculation about benefits than harms; (3) it's not about moral goodness. 1 and 2 will be a problem for most forms of consequentialism, and 3 most definitely will be.

Great minds think alike! 💁‍♂️ Thx for raising the point re: practical advantages of calling HBA utilitarian. But I think it risks fostering misunderstandings. Why not just say that a committee considers harms and benefits, then passes a judgment? That's even simpler.

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